CongressDaily / March 27, 2000 / by Jerry Hagstrom
The World Trade Organization Agriculture Committee, which met last week in Geneva, agreed to ask the WTO Secretariat to prepare a study of agricultural export subsidies in a common currency - and the United States agreed to supply information on U.S. agricultural credit guarantee programs, even though those programs are not technically export subsidies under WTO rules, a WTO official told CongressDaily Friday. Under rules set by the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, credit guarantee programs are not considered export subsidies. U.S. officials have said they do not consider the credit guarantee programs to be export subsidies because the interest rates in the programs are at commercial levels. But the credit guarantee programs do make lenders more comfortable about making sales because the United States does guarantee payment.
Both the European Union and the Cairns Group have said they want trade negotiations to encompass all export instruments, not just direct subsidies. The WTO official said the report should be ready by June and should encompass data from 1995 to the present. A spokesman for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative today confirmed the United States would provide the information on the agricultural credit guarantee programs - but the spokesman added that all of the information to be provided already is publicly available. Meanwhile, Foreign Agriculture Service Administrator Tim Galvin said the inability of the WTO agriculture delegates in Geneva to name a chairman showed the meeting was "a replay of Seattle, with the European Union against the rest of the world. That's unfortunate."
European Union Deputy Head of Delegation John Richardson spoke enthusiastically Friday of another potential statistical study: the joint request by members of Congress and members of the European Parliament to Trade Representative Barshefsky and EU Trade Minister Pascal Lamy asking for "basic facts and statistics" so that a common base of information on U.S. and EU agricultural subsidies can be established. Richardson said that, if the letter writers "can agree on a common terminology," the agricultural policy debate can be "objectified."
Richardson said he believes recent statements by Agriculture Secretary Glickman and EU Agriculture Minister Franz Fischler stressing the common interests between the United States and European Union indicate that the United States and the European Union are "getting away from the idea that we have diametrically opposed policies. The debate is not any more about whether we will have support in agriculture. There's a recognition it's needed." Richardson said the perception of the European Common Agricultural Policy in Congress is "outdated" and that the debate over proper agricultural policy should switch from the question of export subsidies to asking whether payments to farmers are "trade distorting.":
